The present invention relates to a device for positioning products extracted from a mold onto a conveyor belt, particularly for soap-molding machines or the like.
Devices are known for extracting soap-cakes molded in molding machines constituted by a rotating drum in which at least two sets of molds are defined and are arranged in mutually diametrally opposite positions; said sets, when the drum rotates about its axis, are alternately arranged facing a counter mold which molds pieces of soap and are then arranged facing the extraction device. Said extraction device generally has suckers which adhere to the soap-cakes in the mold and, after extracting them from the mold, deposit them on a conveyor belt, rotating them about an axis which is parallel to the axis of the drum of the molding machine to move the face of each soap-cake engaged with a sucker from a vertical plane in the mold to a horizontal plane on a conveyor belt.
The distance between the soap-cakes exiting from these extraction devices is substantially equal to the distance of the soap-cakes in the mold, i.e. equal to the pitch between the molding cavities on the drum. This distance is kept as small as possible so as to reduce processing waste. The soap-cakes deposited on the conveyor belt are conveyed to packaging machines which require greater distances between the soap-cakes than the abovesaid pitch in order to allow the packaging operations to be carried out correctly.
In order to adapt the distance between the soap-cakes to the requirements of the packaging machines, positioning devices are provided ahead of the packaging machines and perform the correct spacing of the soap-cakes.
Such known positioning devices have, however, some disadvantages.
More particularly, the operating speeds of said positioning devices are considerably lower than those of the molding machines and packaging machines, causing undesirable grouping of the soap-cakes at the input of the positioning device, with the possibility of collisions and damage to the soap-cakes, and do not fully exploit the productive potentiality of the packaging machines.